There is a need for a hand-held power tool that has the capability to clean surfaces, such as by brushing and buffing, which may otherwise be difficult to effectively clean, such as on automobiles, particularly in their interiors. Automobile owners generally clean the exterior surfaces of their cars on a fairly regular basis either themselves or by running their car through an automatic carwash such as at gasoline stations. These automatic carwashes uetilize high pressure jets of cleaning solution sprayed at the cars as they are run through the carwash and have rotating apparatuses carrying rag-type cleaning elements and/or brush bristles which are moved to a position adjacent the car so as to contact the car's exterior surface as they are rotated. While these car-washes are quick, they are generally no substitute for a manual detailing of the car's surfaces, especially those surfaces which can be buffed to a high shine such as chrome and other metallic surfaces and those surfaces which are hard to access such a between parts. Automated carwashes typically do not have the capacity for such specified cleaning and can not approach the cleaning job obtained through a manual detailing where a person can apply precise pressure to difficult-to-clean spots, such as where there is dirt build-up and can buff specific surfaces until they are shined sufficiently.
With respect to the car's interior surfaces, particularly those that are difficult to access, such as the surfaces on and around the doors, dashboard and steering column, these surfaces are subject to cleaning on a much more infrequent basis than the car's exterior and are generally only cleaned when a car is taken in to be detailed at a full-service carwash after an automated washing of the car's exterior. As molding techniques for producing car parts have become more advanced, these interior parts have correspondingly taken on a wider variety of shapes and configurations which can make them more difficult to access and clean. Because of the lack of regular cleaning, these surfaces can get fairly dirty with grime and dust which builds up over lengthy periods of time. In order to clean these surfaces, workers at full-service carwashes generally use a wide variety of different types of cleaning solutions applied to the surfaces designed to cut through the dirt buildup thereon with the surfaces being wiped down by brushes, rags and the like. As with the exterior detailing, to ensure a good cleaning job for these surfaces, the rags or other cleaning elements must be wiped against the surface with a certain amount of pressure so as to remove the dirt buildup thereon. Where the surfaces are difficult to access, it is also difficult for a worker to obtain the proper leverage to apply the pressure required to ensure a thorough cleaning of the surface. Oftentimes, the workers will open the car door when cleaning the car's interior surfaces and position themselves so their legs are on the ground outside the car while they clean the underneath surfaces on and near the dashboard and steering column areas in the car so as to be able to gain the leverage to exert the pressure required on these surfaces for removing the accumulated dirt thereon. As carwashes can be high volume facilities where workers are driving cars to various locations thereabout, the requirement that workers position themselves partially outside the car to clean car interior surfaces can present a potentially hazardous situation.
As is apparent from the above, cleaning and detailing the surfaces of a car is a difficult and laborious task which may explain why car owners do not often perform this task themselves, or at least on a more regular basis as with each washing of the car exterior. It also explains the presence of such detailing facilities as car owners would rather pay someone else the money to detail their car rather than exert the time and effort required if they were to do it themselves. Such non-automated detailing can be fairly expensive, particularly if one desires to keep their car detailed on a regular basis. Thus, there is a need for a hand-held power tool which can be used to clean and buff surfaces, such as on a car. In addition, it is desirable that the power tool have a working element which can be rotated or reciprocated against the surface to be cleaned so as to provide the tool with greater flexibility in cleaning surfaces having different orientations and various configurations and which otherwise would be difficult to effectively clean either manually or in an automatic carwash. Such a power tool should have a sturdy, heavy duty transmission for generating rotary and reciprocating action of the cleaning element as the cleaning element will often be applied with some pressure by the worker using the tool against the surface being cleaned. The tool should be ergonomically designed so that it can be gripped at a variety of locations along its housing to accommodate the various surfaces it must reach and clean while also allowing an operator to exert the appropriate amount of control and pressure on the cleaning element. The tool should also have a mechanism which prevents a user from shifting the tool from its rotating mode to its reciprocating mode while the tool is being operated to avoid shock loads on the gears and shafting of the transmission system and stripping of gear teeth. Finally, the power tool should be capable of being used with a wide variety of cleaning elements which can be easily and quickly interchanged with each other for use with the tool.